Thanks to black-and-white photographs, movies, and New York City art-world lore, Manhattan loft living has been romanticized for decades. As a result, those vast swaths of mostly uninterrupted space in SoHo’s and Tribeca’s old manufacturing and warehouse buildings remain deeply coveted. And yet, the average New Yorker wouldn’t know how to make them comfortable for everyday life due to their expansive open floor plans.
Such was the case for one young family, who called on designer Paris Forino to help resolve their flummoxing space dilemma. “They’d been living there for six years before they brought me in,” Forino says, referring to the family’s 4,000-square-foot loft apartment in a landmarked Tribeca building that was originally built as a warehouse in the 1800s. “They hadn’t done much to it; it had a lot of potential but was very underutilized.”
The family had only been socializing in one corner of their vast living area before the design intervention. But Forino knew exactly what needed to be done to optimize the unit and encourage the family to venture into all areas of their own home. “We really wanted to activate every part of the great room,” Forino explains, referring to the spacious common area.
The designer tackled that area first by dividing it into three distinct zones and then by using coffers to demarcate each section. “We [wanted] to create interest in this massive ceiling,” explains Forino. The move also gave the illusion of a more intimate, smaller-scaled space. Lighting is tucked inside each lip of the coffers, which imbues the formerly dark interiors with extra brightness. Notably, each zone can be lit up individually, allowing the owners to highlight different areas depending on their needs.
Forino used the clients’ one main request—that the apartment’s palette be pink—to pull the room together. “She really wanted pink,” says Forino of the family’s matriarch, “and [her husband said,] ‘Okay, let’s do pink.’” To ensure the family did not wind up living in a cotton candy explosion, Forino used warm, grounding pink tones throughout the public spaces and in other areas of the apartment. “When you’re in it, it just has a happy feeling. There’s a joy to the color…. It’s not like a baby’s room,” the designer says of the finished product.
Walls are the first and foremost focus of this rose-tinted effort. In the great room, a soothing hemp wallpaper by Phillip Jeffries lines the walls. A pink kitchen, with cabinets and refrigerator painted in Farrow & Ball’s Red Earth, continues the peachy feel. The only rooms that aren’t bathed in the shade are the office, along with its en suite bathroom, and the powder room. “We went a little more masculine here with this beautiful hunter green,” Forino says of the walls in the office, which doubles as a guest bedroom.
Additional variations of the rose-tinted hue can be found in the primary bathroom, where glazed zellige tiles line the shower walls and a soft pink tadelakt-style plaster surface was installed above the vanity. In the primary bedroom, only the carpet, sconces, headboard, and bed frame get the pink treatment—the rest is punctured by subtle green and blue accents, along with a few neutral nods in between.
Now that every square inch of the Manhattan loft has been tended to, the family is able to properly enjoy their prized New York City apartment. “The transformation was unbelievable,” Forino says. “Every corner of the apartment feels loved and touched and designed, and part of a big whole.”